


your voice

by PumpkinDoodles



Series: Taserbones Tumblr Prompts & Tiny (Adorkable) Fics [22]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Darcy's the temp while Jane is out of town, F/M, Triple Agent!Rumlow, fun with surveillance, she does it for the fun of playing with the drones, the real question is why did Darcy stay in the van?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:02:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22311430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PumpkinDoodles/pseuds/PumpkinDoodles
Summary: Brock Rumlow can't stop thinking about the voice in his ear during this mission.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Brock Rumlow
Series: Taserbones Tumblr Prompts & Tiny (Adorkable) Fics [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1484168
Comments: 37
Kudos: 413





	your voice

**Author's Note:**

> *I own nothing

“Thank you,” Rumlow said politely to the waiter. He was sitting at a cafe in Marseille, waiting for a drop, followed by a pickup. Only Cameron Klein was late with his bag of faked Chitauri bomb tech. They’d been delayed in fabrications and hadn’t been able to leave the stuff with him last night. “Where is he?” Brock said impatiently. Only the person on the other side of his earpiece could hear him. “The client’ll be here any goddamned minute,” he said, aggrieved.

“Headed your way, Rumlow,” the woman handling the drone surveillance feeds said in his ear. “ETA is less than a minute, he’s two streets over. I’m looking right at him.” Her voice was light and casual. 

“Fine,” Rumlow said, trying not to fidget. He didn’t know her. She was a temporary hire, according to Hill, and her name was need-to-know. He hadn’t seen her face over the last few days, either. That didn’t bug him. Rumlow didn’t think she’d last in this job if she hadn't been a temp. For one, she hummed a lot. Talked more than your typical SHIELD agent. He could appreciate that she was a non-panicker, however. That was better than someone who added to your field stress with their own anxiety. He picked up anxiety like spare fucking change these days. But she was solid. Funny. Even charming.

“Something wrong?” she asked suddenly, voice curious.

“Were you snacking this morning?” he said.

“Shit,” she said. He could hear the blended amusement and guilt in her voice. “I bought these pastries,” she admitted. “We’re parked near a patisserie.”

“Uh-huh,” Rumlow said. “I see him.” Cameron Klein--disguised as a bike messenger--was speeding towards him. “Tell him not to crash into this fucking snob Valhalla.” He heard her reel off instructions to slow down, then she repeated his words.

“Snob Valhalla?” she said archly. 

“I don’t exactly blend,” Rumlow said, looking around at the businessmen and tourists. He could see his face reflected in a nearby window. It was still startling that Helen Cho had actually been able to heal all his burns, earned during the Triskelion collapse when he was embedded within HYDRA and feeding information to Phil Coulson. He’d stolen back HYDRA equipment for SHIELD as Crossbones and was now fake-fencing it all over the world under his old name. Old name, old face, old life. 

“That’s all?” she said. Cameron Klein set the package next to his table as he ostensibly delivered something else; there was a complicated routine where Klein pretended to trip on a chair leg, was caught by a waiter, and generally appeared to be flustered and overworked and terrible at speaking French. 

“Student, student,” he repeated, in an awkward accent. Rumlow watched him bicycle away. 

“Congratulate him on that,” he told his handler. “He’s improving.”

“Technically, it was my idea,” she said. “The terrible bike messenger routine.”

“Yeah?”

“Saw it in a movie,” she said. Then her voice went more serious. “Your guy’s here. Two blocks away.”

“All right,” he said. The buyer would pay Rumlow, go three blocks, and then be arrested by a second team masquerading as staff at his hotel before he transferred the fake tech. Provided everything went seamlessly, Rumlow could maintain his post-Crossbones cover of being a sleazebag living in Europe. He’d managed to become a well-known black marketer in Western Europe. They’d explained his survival by spreading rumors that he’d paid a doctor to fix his face and had various government officials in his pocket. 

He saw the buyer first: a thin, twitchy-looking man. Rumlow had a whole schtick for intimidating people like this, so he smiled widely. “There you are,” he said. “I was beginning to worry you’d stood me up, pal.”

“No--no,” the buyer stuttered. He was just a middleman for the guy Rumlow really was trying to make contact with, unfortunately; an arms dealer with roots going back to Obadian Stane’s era. 

“Nervous?” Rumlow said, smiling in a shark-like way he’d learned from Rollins.

“Ooooh,” the voice said in his ear. That meant he’d done it well, he knew. She had a bad habit of involuntarily showing signs of being impressed by agents’ work.

“Why don’t we complete our business?” he offered the buyer, grin widening. He heard the faintest little snicker on the line.

She was humming to low music when they arrested the buyer a few blocks away. “All done,” she announced. “Rollins has him.”

“Good,” Rumlow said. “Who’s that this time?” He’d been treated to some Chris Isaak, various Tom Petty songs, and several people he didn’t know this week. 

“Melody Gardot. You’re off the clock, Commander,” she said.

“What do you do off the clock?” he said idly. Kept his voice casual.

“Much more boring things than you,” she said. 

“You have any boring plans tonight?” he asked. It would be interesting to see her face. He liked her voice. And he was tired of going to sleep in empty hotel beds, now that he wasn’t dealing with debilitating nerve damage and a scarred face. “You feel like a drink?” he added. There was a pause. He heard her sigh. 

“Sadly, I really am a temp,” she said. “Getting on a train in two hours.”

“Train, huh?” he said.

“You should’ve asked yesterday. My little vacay’s over,” she said, “in about fifteen minutes.”

“This was actually a vacation for you?” he said, intrigued and doubtful all at once. What was she playing at, he wondered? Teasing him? She sounded teasing.

“You have no idea how much I had to beg Maria to let me do this while my regular boss was out of range,” she said dryly. “But now she’s back and I’m needed again.”

“I wouldn’t say you weren’t needed this week,” he said.

“You do realize I can hear everything you say?” Maria Hill’s voice cut in.

“I did,” she said with a giggle that thrilled him a fraction. “I don’t think Rumlow did.”

“C’mon, Maria, it’s not like I said anything, other than inviting a colleague out for a very civilized drink,” Rumlow said.

“Uh-huh,” Maria said. “And you, stop enjoying this so much.”

“But I’m having so much fun!” she said delightedly.

“She can’t have fun?” Rumlow said at the same time.

“She has a train to catch and you have debrief,” Hill told him sternly.

By the time he caught up with the van that afternoon, she was gone. “Temp surveillance left?” he asked the agent unloading the equipment.

“Yeah,” Agent Michaels said.

“You meet her?” he asked enviously.

“Saw her once.” At Rumlow’s look, he added, “Just a regular brunette,” shrugging. “Short. Glasses. She left her scarf.” There was a scarf draped over the chair. Lightweight cotton, ink blue, almost sheer. Rumlow took it. The soft material crumpled in his hands. It smelled like gardenias and something vaguely beachy--ocean salt, he wondered? Or was that coconuts? He inhaled softly and grinned to himself. 

Wrapping the scarf around his neck, he went to go badger Hill about a name and address. He’d even settle for a phone number.


End file.
